The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) prepares an annual National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) that provides federal policymakers and senior officials with a comprehensive appraisal of the danger that trafficking and use of illicit drugs pose to the security of our nation. To expand the scope of its NDTA, and to provide the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and other federal officials with a broad and deep understanding of the full burden that illicit drug use places on our
country, NDIC has prepared this assessment— The Economic Impact of Illicit Drug Use on American Society. The assessment is conducted within a Cost of Illness (COI) framework that has guided work of this kind for several decades. As such, it monetizes the consequences of illicit drug use, thereby allowing its impact to be gauged relative to other social problems.

In 2007, the cost of illicit drug use totaled more than $193 billion.

$193 billion. In one year? Wow.

How is illicit drug use costing us so much? Let’s look at what they’re including…

Now, you have to read the actual report to understand what they mean by some of those terms above, but are you already starting to get the picture?

The vast majority of those costs are directly attributable to prohibition, not illicit drug use.

Criminal justice costs of $56 billion, for example, include the police, courts, and prisons that enforce drug laws.

And the absolute largest portion of the total costs by far is “lost productivity.” Here’s my favorite: $48 billion attributable to lost productivity due to prison. That’s right, they’re considering it a cost to society that people are not being productive because they’ve been arrested for drug offenses and are in jail. And they attribute this cost to illicit drug use. They even invented a really bizarre-sounding term: drug-induced incarceration.

Now I’ve heard of drug-induced hallucinations before, but drug-induced incarceration? I don’t think so. It takes a law and a judge to induce an incarceration.

Most of the other so-called costs of illicit drug use are equally suspect. Take a look at the lost labor productivity from drug users who aren’t incarcerated. They’ve essentially looked at the income of those who use illicit drugs and compared it to those who don’t and called the difference “lost productivity.” That ignores all sorts of social and class implications related to the status of illicit drugs and also whether drug use drives unemployment or the reverse is true.

Take a look at treatment costs and you’ll find they not only count the cost of treatment, but the cost of lost productivity for those in treatment, and yet treatment may be not a result of illicit drug addiction, but of court mandate.

Or health costs. How much of the health costs mentioned are because illicit drugs are unregulated, leading to overdoses and other health problems? And death. They also counted the lost productivity of every person in history who died because of illicit drugs and would have been alive to work in 2007 otherwise. This means they counted all the people who died from heroin laced with all sorts of adulterants – a direct result of unregulated drugs.

The more you look at the report and analyze it, the more you see it as a damning report on the cost of the drug war to society. And yet it’s actually presented as a justification for the drug war.

The base line they use for the report is a drug-free America.

It is important to note that this analysis occurs within the context of a “what if” scenario in which illicit drug use no longer exists.

So essentially, they are comparing a mythical non-illicit-drug-use state with today’s illicit-drug-use state. Except that that’s not really true. They are completely ignoring prohibition. In a non-illicit-drug-use state, there would be no prohibition. Prohibition is not something that just exists because drug use exists. It is an active and significant factor that’s been added to the equation. To ignore a factor of such magnitude renders the entire report meaningless.

Imagine that the government had bizarrely decreed that corn was only allowed to be planted in rocky desert areas. Now imagine that a government report studied the attempts to grow corn and concluded, without any reference to the decree, that corn was not a viable crop for the United States. How stupid would those analysts look? And yet, this is the same kind of stupidity used in this National Drug Intelligence Center report.

It gets worse.

After listing a bunch of costs that are truly attributable to the drug war and not to illicit drug use, the analysts actually conclude that this report justifies the drug war and the drug policies that the federal government are pursuing.

…it is relatively easy to draw inferences from the findings presented above.

It is important that illicit drugs be made as difficult and costly to obtain as possible. This points to the value of law enforcement efforts. […]

The findings thus validate the basic premises of the National Drug Control Strategy. Strong law enforcement efforts that reduce cultivation, production, and distribution of illicit drugs both limit consumer access and enhance
public safety…

Incredible. I’ve seen a lot of junk science in my time, but I’d be hard pressed to come up with a more blatant example of just making up a conclusion that had nothing to do with (and in fact was contradicted by) the data presented.

The last quoted paragraph actually contradicts itself in some ways – “as difficult and costly”, it is easier for kids to get Cannabis than Alcohol and the price of ‘illicit’ drugs has been steadily falling over the decades… good justification then for the policy. This is beyond mental gymnastics, 2 + 2 really does equal 5.. just as O’Brien said..

Pete, did you really believe that those who earn their living by continuing the WOD and it’s accompanying dishonest propaganda would suddenly agree that they should stop?

It is a recurring problem in America – those who earn their living in a particular area of government quickly realize that their entire job entails keeping their particular area of government funded. So, they spend all their time/effort/integrity to do just that, at the expense of whatever their original “mission” was.

The National Drug Hysteria Center fails in every category but ethics violations, where they excel mightily. Their report is an example of how an impotent government agency pats itself on the back for a job poorly done, while all the time acting as its own judge and jury. The report is further evidence that supports a critical need to defund and dissolve the ONDCP.

The ONDCP would never dare contract an independent, objective committee to assess the social or monetary impact of illicit drugs on society. Every time a U.S. president has appointed such a commission, prohibition gets shot full of arrows.

Instead, the ONDCP and tax-payer funded National Drug Hysteria Center has concocted a report designed to manipulate rather than inform. Any report that pursues an objective, reality-based evaluation of the situation would necessarily require an assessment of the positive impact illicit drugs have on individual users, and the business sector, as a counter to any alleged negative impact. But the presumption throughout the report is that all illicit drug use is evil, and therefore all such drugs must detract from the economy in some abstract and abstruse way.

For instance, how many employee-hours are saved because people are able to de-stress from their crummy jobs by smoking a little cannabis after work, as opposed to becoming alcoholics, or demanding more vacation time, or using up their sick leave to add to vacation time? How many people use drugs to help keep themselves sane in an insane society? How much money does the health insurance industry save by not having to pay out claims for medicating patients who use medical marijuana instead of exorbitantly expensive, more harmful, and less effective pharmaceutical drugs?

None of these questions get asked by the Center, because such questions are not relevant to making prohibition look necessary. What’s relevant to the ONDCP is any fraud or pseudoscience that appears to justify their existence.

GNLPPLHHH…WTF….Huh…TILT.
Every one of these supposed “costs” is either directly attributable to prohibition, or would be easily mitigated by it’s removal. 30 seconds is all it takes to recognize this as self serving garbage with no basis in reality. Their baseline of no illicit drug use is absurd. It’s the tooth fairy and the easter bunny and santa claus all rolled up in a nice bundle and presented by a unicorn.

A terrible new epidemic is sweeping America, at great social cost. It’s street name is “lunch.” Lunch is taking millions of Americans away from their jobs in the very middle of the day, with enormous productivity losses. Lunch is a major contributor to obesity and higher health costs. “It is important that [lunch] be made as difficult and costly to obtain as possible. This points to the value of law enforcement efforts.”

‘It has been shown that when addicts don’t get their lunch, it leads to a direct drop in worker-performance. However, as we don’t want to send a message of acceptance or harm reduction of this sweeping epidemic, anyone caught taking lunch will immediately be docked pay. It would be so much easier if people realised they don’t need lunch to have a happy and successful working life’

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Do you have any clue how many unwanted babies are spawned during “lunch hour”? Many of these children end up criminals or even worse, addicted to drugs! We’re on the verge of losing an entire generation to the irresponsible cohort of lunch eaters. We also need to address the problem of “coffee breaks” which as we all know is the gateway to lunch addiction! “Oh, it’s just a little cuppa cawfee…”

“Do you have any clue how many unwanted babies are spawned during “lunch hour”?”

The street name for this phenomina is “the nooner.”

Research has found however that successfully incarcerating the lunch abuser also successfully eliminates the so called “nooner.” Therefore, as a professional government analyist, I recommend incarcerating all who take lunch.

This could be another great money making opportunity for the greedy corporations. Lunch screenings for anyone caught with crumbs on their shirt or onions on their breath. They would have to strip down and pee in a cup in front of a witness. The sample will then be analyzed to determine if lunch has been illegally consumed. All those with a positive test result will be immediately fired, have their children taken by child services, will be disqualified from any government assisted programs, grants, loans, etc, sentenced to 5 years hard labor at the fat farm, and be generally labeled and scorned by society for the rest of their lives.

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I’ve heard that there’s been some pretty remarkable results in making bald pates grow hair using a cannabinoid infused topical salve. Not so far fetched as it might seem on first glance when you consider that the scalp is just lousy with CB2 receptors.

If we could prove that it cures baldness cannabis would be legal before you could finish blinking. Just consider the number of bald lawmakers and administrative drones.

PS CB2 receptors aren’t part of getting high so no one even gets a buzz from topical salve applied to the scalp.

Sheeple.
Sheeple who believe pretzel logic.
I wonder how the fat cat owners of the privatized prisons are connected with this “study”?
Let’s take an open minded look at Portugal where “Five years (after “decriminalizing the use and possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other illicit street drugs) the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.
“…penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are unchanged; dealers are still jailed and subjected to fines depending on the crime.” And “critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.”

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Less than 5% of prisoners in the US are housed in privately owned prisons. Do you think we could ever lay this “privatized prison” nonsense to rest? This absurd premise makes all of us look like brain addled nutcakes. It might be locally relevant in a few places but it just isn’t a concern for the vast majority of the country.

The self-interest element of the prison-industrial complex seems to come mostly from the prison-guards unions who can always be relied on to pump members dues income into opposing legalization campaigns.

Duncan, you can’t ignore the money involved, and the amount of lobbying that goes on in States where it does occur. It becomes (and has become) a self perpetuating and highly profitable industry that uses it’s monetary clout to influence legislators and legislation. And as such, they deserve a place in our cross hairs. They are the devout opponents we fight and they are highly monetized.
That is to say nothing about the moral or social implications of one class of people profiting from putting people from another class in cages.

Now now dunkem I already think of you as a brain addled nutcake so you don’t have to worry. Even government tax paid prisons require corporate paraphernalia and that means profit. Eac h dollar the government spends goes to someone the same as war money to Haliburton. Every $72,000 a year per private prisoner Koch profits on also goes to corporate profits selling paraphernalia. Shower shoes to metal trays. Each vehicle uses crude oil. That doesn’t include the prison slave labor giving corporations the same profits as one who outsources to India. The construction business is booming and each person paid sends Obombo a check April 15. Picking numbers out of a hat won’t stop this product from being sold. Typical denialist attitude, never changes and thats what makes brain addled nutcakes.

All of this does not even mention the costs of protecting MORE dangerous substances, such as Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco cigarettes and alcohol, from far safer substances as Coca Leaf and MJ, let alone the perversion of Coca Leaf and Opium into concentrated dosing of cocaine and heroin.

Coca is the safest stimulant, and was banned by the USDA largely over its promotion as a ‘Tobacco habit cure’

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Well gosh, when I started looking at SAMHSA statistics such as the 2010 report on “drugged” driving I thought wow, California is at the top of the heap for reducing the incidence of drugged driving, and look, there’s Alaska with no penalty up to an ounce and none for petty cultivation. Oh and would you look at that, not one State with a statistically significant increase in “drugged driving” while all those States were implementing medicinal cannabis patient protection laws. That stuff really doesn’t impress the genuine Know Nothings at all. They don’t seem to have the native intelligence required to differentiate kiddie diddling and pot smoking so I really shouldn’t have been surprised that they can only see two levels of recreational use of cannabis and the resulting consequences. It’s either on or off, black or white, yes or no, summary execution or everyone older than age 6 is addicted to heroin to those people.

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I do agree brian, and I wasn’t trying to say that we shouldn’t proactively advance the argument because the Know Nothings are clueless. My comments about their thickness was more an observation coming from a state of utter disbelief. I’m 50, and had never realized before late 2009 or perhaps early 2010 that there are humans who can actually be alive without a brain that’s in working order. I had always thought the scarecrow was a fictional character. I guess that this means that the man behind the curtain is also real. This stuff can take some getting used to.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1kBiAYQMDg

I would not be just a nothin’
my head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain.

I would dance and be merry,
life would be a ding-a-derry,
If I only had a brain.

Duncan, the human “brain” is Nature’s best Rube Goldberg invention. If you think about it, it is the most absurdly complex solution to the basic problem of “Eat, Sleep, Fuck- Repeat” out there. Seriosly. Like the Platypus, the human “brain” is evidence that Nature has a sense of humor. And irony.
Study it long enough, and like me you’ll come to the conclusion that it’s evolution was some sort of grand mistake.
Seeing people everyday walking around with non-functional brains only reinforces my conclusions. It appears the worst effect these people suffer is an inability to program a TiVo. So, next time they tell you on PBS what an evolutionary marvel your brain is, remember, G.W. Bush achieved the Presidency and served two full terms without one.

The New Zealand Police commissioned its now legacy report “Drug Harm Index” by so called accredited economists BERL and came to the same conclusion. Drug harm is created by Policing it, but it is sold to the public as a net good…. clowns all of them!

I realize this blog probably attracts an older crowd, so you probably don’t play video games as much as me. I’ve been playing L.A. Noire, a game where you play as a detective in 1940s Los Angeles. I just beat the first vice case where I found tons of army surplus morphine and accomplished nothing. Have a look at a video of the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihrg2bSyiI4&feature=player_detailpage#t=1052s

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Do some of the National Drug “Intelligence” Center costs include the cost of people having cancer? I must say I’m dumbfounded, and I doubt anyone here would have ever thought it possible but it seems that someone has claimed to have proven that the National Cancer Institute had their collective arm twisted to convince them to change their cannabis information page by some of the high ranking Know Nothing prohibitionists in our government. As far fetched as that sounds on the surface it looks like they actually may have done so!

Well, at least we’ve solved the mystery of why the NCI was so friendly in the first place.

Did anyone else know that “the treatment database is called the Physician Data Query (PDQ); the PDQ entry on marijuana (“cannabis and cannabinoids” are the terms NCI uses) is maintained by the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Editorial Board? The lead reviewer of the marijuana summary statement is CAM board member Donald Abrams, the director of Integrative Oncology at the University of California-San Francisco cancer center.”

Suppressing the potential cure for cancer. Compared to that Mr. Hitler just wasn’t such a bad guy after all. (fuck Michael Godwin and his stinking law)

They’ve known about the cancer fighting properties of cannabinoids for over thirty years. They’ve been suppressing the information as well as the research into the drug for just as long.
Really, why else would they suppress research into this drug? Unless they already KNEW what these researchers would likely find? Duncan, I’ve the sneaking suspicion the Government already HAS this research in hand, and does not want it duplicated publicly.
Scrubbing the NCI’s database is S.O.P. in the war on (some) drugs.

Nice, Malcolm. So Kyle K. has that site up now. I met him at the Cup in San Fran. and we talked
organics for a while. He’s linked up with Canna to help sell their organic lines. We don’t agree on everything, but he’s a knowledgeable guy. Kudos. Guess I’ll drop him a line and tell him what a great choice he’s made selecting contributors.

A short while back on here, the observation was made (maybe it was Pete) that it may be useful to inform the ‘medical marijuana community’ on prohibition’s (and not just concerning maryjane) perfide nature and it’s general effects on the lives of all of us. Coincidently, at that very moment, I was considering a request from MM.com to contribute to their site.

It sure looks like listing organic THC as an analog of dronabinol has confused people. Reports that the DEA is starting to license cannabis farms to use to make “generic” marinol are starting to trickle in. I wonder how the heck you grow synthetic pot plants?

The poor pot plants have no say. First they extract using petrochemical solvents, then they purify , again, using petroleum solvents, then they cook as much of those solvents off as they feel they need to in order to get around health concerns and FDA. Then they combine this toxic mess they brewed with nice, natural, unsuspecting sesame oil, place in a gel cap, and say it’s just as good as (not better than in any substantial way)whole, natural cannabis.
This has the end result of supporting the petroleum companies, the chemical companies, and the pharmaceutical companies. At the expense of course, of the patient, and the carbon footprint of the whole process. And, of course, perpetuates this whole prohibition scheme, and serves all of the associated leeches attached.

OOH! I’M SOOOO EXCITED! Just brought home my new rolling composter! I get chills at the very thought of rotting vegetable matter. I’m going to have to change my pants! My worms will be happy for me. They don’t have a jealous bone in their little bodies! OOH! Is that a BANANA PEEL I spy?

[Note: my husband just ran out the door yelling something about heaven and God and then something about the salad we had for dinner last night. He’s done this before,… usually he comes back after a few days and denies any memory of the incident that prompted the outburst. In the meantime, I’ll hit post for him and I’m sure he’ll be back sometime soon to tell you what he’s on about. Mrs. darkcycle]

Is The DEA Legalizing THC?
So, in other words, if a pharmaceutical product contains THC extracted from the marijuana plant, that would be a legal commodity. But if you or I possessed THC extracted from the marijuana plant, that would remain an illegal commodity.

The long-maligned field of U.S. medical cannabis research took a step forward with the formal government approval of a study on the efficacy of marijuana to treat chronic post-traumatic stress disorder in war veterans.

Dr. Rick Doblin, executive director of the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in Santa Cruz, Calif., said today in an interview that the Food and Drug Administration on April 28 approved MAPS’ protocol for a study of smoked and vaporized marijuana use for symptoms of PTSD.

This Memorial Day lets remember the Vets
sitting in Cages for relieving their PTSD.
Thanks to the Gossip.

Strangely enough, synthetic dronabinol is said to have directly caused 4 deaths. Unfortunately there were no details of how, why or who was killed by it. It sure would be fascinating to hear the details of how a non-toxic substance could be synthesized and become toxic.
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DC, there aren’t any pot plants used in the production process of synthetic dronabinol. The Feds use C02 to extract for their “dig a hole and fill it back up” procedure to make all of the GI cannabis identical.

I don’t know what the Feds use, Petroleum esthers are more efficient, and likely the method of choice for the pharma’s. In any case , that was extrapolation based on the methods of extraction I’m familiar with. Probably should have noted that was speculation, though. Thanks Dun.

You know, every blog i’ve ever been on except this one has people from “the other side” who come on and argue their case using evidence, often quite effectively…. for some reason, nobody from the prohibitionist side ever comes on here to make the case for continuing the current policies…. I wonder why?

i wonder what the “case using evidence” might have been? the case for prohibition is founded on greed, lies, and hate. that is why it’s going to lose in the end. it carries the seeds of it’s own destruction.

Exactly. The evidence does not exist. So they have to make it up, like this absurd “report.” My comparison was with other blogs dealing with contentious subjects, like for example the Arab-Israeli conflict, where posters will argue their case at every opportunity….I don’t see that happening here….prohibitionists seem to be unwilling to have their arguments tested…..

In the last couple of years the median IQ of the prohibitionists has fallen off of a cliff. There used to be some fairly intelligent people arguing that side of the issue. But now, the only ones with IQs above room temperature have direct, vested monetary interests.

Say, I just read a really great post from an Arizonian in regard to the controversy of their medicinal cannabis patient protection law. We all need a good belly laugh from time to time, and the reponse to LotusBlossom is just precious:

* LotusBlossom
* May-30 @ 12:44 PM
* Report abuse | Reply

I don’t smoke marijuana, never have. But I know when my son had a grapefruit-sized tumor in his back from testicular cancer and was going through extreme chemotherapy, marijuana was the only thing that helped his nausea. We didn’t have to vote to legalize morphine or xanax, why do we have to vote on and discuss marijuana? It’s a medicine.

There is 1 reply to this comment. Expand

* farm1967
* May-30 @ 1:15 PM
* Report abuse| Reply

tell that to the people who have thought they had wings and “flew” off balconies 200 feet in the air

So this year I get to pay more taxes than GE just to have it squandered on bullshit self-serving propaganda that has no purpose other than trying to justify their miserably failed war on drugs.
Couple this with the rising trend of militarizing police forces nationwide and the trampling of 4th Amendment rights by SCOTUS and you have a real bleak outlook for cannabis users.
Wake up all you lemmings, it’s way past time to cut the purse strings.
Isn’t the definition of insanity making the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome?